Ten Simple Rules For Dating My Daughter

Rule One: If you pull into my driveway and honk you'd better be delivering a package, because you're sure not picking anything up here.

Rule Two: You do not touch my daughter in front of me. You may glance at her, so long as you do not peer at anything below her neck. If you cannot keep your eyes or hands off of my daughter's body, I will remove them.

Rule Three: I am aware that it is considered fashionable for boys of your age to wear their trousers so loosely that they appear to be falling off their hips. Please don't take this as an insult, but you and all of your friends are complete idiots. Still I want to be fair and open minded about this issue, so I propose this compromise. You may come to the door with your underwear showing and your pants ten sizes too big, and I will not object. However, in order to ensure that your clothes do not, in fact, come off during the course of your date with my daughter, I will take my electric nail gun and fasten your trousers securely in place to your waist.

Rule Four: I'm sure you've been told that in today's world, sex without utilizing a "barrier method" of some kind can kill you. Let me elaborate, when it comes to sex, I am the barrier, and I will kill you.

Rule Five: In order for us to get to know each other, we should talk about sports, politics, and other issues of the day. Please do not do this. The only information I require from you is an indication of when you expect to have my daughter safely back at my house, and the word I need from you is "early."

Rule Six: I have no doubt you are a popular fellow, with many opportunities to date other girls. This is fine with me as long as it is okay with my daughter. Otherwise, once you have gone out with my little girl, you will continue to date no one but her until she is finished with you. If you make her cry, I will make you cry.

Rule Seven: As you stand in my front hallway, waiting for my daughter to appear, and more than an hour goes by, do not sigh and fidget. If you want to be on time for the movie, you should not be dating. My daughter is putting on her makeup, a process that can take longer than painting the Golden Gate Bridge. Instead of just standing there, why don't you do something useful like changing the oil in my car?

Rule Eight: The following places are not appropriate for a date with my daughter: Places where there are beds, sofas, or anything softer than a wooden stool. Places where there are no parents, policemen, or nuns within eyesight. Places where there is dancing, holding hands, or happiness. Places where the ambient temperature is warm enough to induce my daughter to wear shorts, tank tops, midriff T-shirts, or anything other than overalls, a sweater, and a goose down parka zipped up to her throat. Movies with a strong romantic or sexual theme are to be avoided; movies, which feature chain saws, are okay. Hockey games are okay. Old folk's homes are better.

Rule Nine: Do not lie to me. I may appear to be a potbellied, balding, middle aged, dimwitted has-been. But on issues relating to my daughter, I am the all-knowing, merciless God of your universe. If I ask you where you are going and with whom, you have one chance to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. I have a shotgun, a shovel, and five acres behind the house. Do not trifle with me.

Rule Ten: Be afraid. Be very afraid. It takes very little for me to mistake the sound of your car in the driveway for a chopper coming in over a rice paddy outside of Hanoi. When my Agent Orange starts acting up, the voices in my head frequently tell me to clean the guns as I wait for you to bring my daughter home. As soon as you pull in the driveway you should exit your car with both hands in plain sight. Speak the perimeter password, announce in a clear voice that you have brought my daughter home safely and early, then return to your car, there is no need for you to come inside. The camouflaged face in the window is mine.

Thank god mine are all gold plated

At least cops can now assume that all funny colored guns are toys. Because it's illegal otherwise.

(Insert crosseyed face here)

http://www.newsday.com/services/newspaper/printedition/thursday/news/ny-txtlegi295705838may29,0,7889447.story

The body unanimously banned the possession, sale or disposal of handguns
painted to look like toys. Handguns must be black, gray, silver, nickel, army
green or gold-plated. New York City Mayor
Michael Bloomberg banned painted guns in 2006. Nassau Executive Thomas
Suozzi has said he pushed for a similar ban because such guns pose a danger to
law enforcement and the public and to support Bloomberg's ban. The Nassau law
goes into effect immediately, but owners of such guns have 30 days to turn over
their weapons to police or change them to accepted colors. Violation of this
misdemeanor offense can result in a fine of up to $1,000, a year in jail or
both.

I sure feel safer now.

Falling with style

I'm pretty sure.......yup, I want one.

Yves Rossy

Umm, wtf

Isabella Rossellini has lost her damn mind

Afghanistan Firefight Heard On Voice Mail

Afghanistan Firefight Heard On Voice Mail

OTIS, Ore. -- An Oregon couple received a frightening phone call from their son in Afghanistan when he inadvertently called home during battle.

Stephen Phillips and other soldiers in his Army MP company were battling insurgents when his phone was pressed against his Humvee. It redialed and called his parents in the small Oregon town of Otis.

Sandie Petee, Phillips' mother, and her husband, Jeff Petee, weren't home at the time of the call. They returned home to find a three-minute voice mail on their answering machine.

"His friend died a year ago in Iraq and I'm thinking, 'Oh my God, this may be the last time I hear my son's voice on the phone,'" Petee said.

They heard shooting, swearing and shouted pleas for more ammunition on the phone call from their son.

"They were pinned down and apparently his barrel was overheating," said Jeff Petee. "It's something a parent really doesn't want to hear. It's a heck of a message to get from your son in Afghanistan."

The three-minute call ended abruptly.

"You could hear him saying stuff like, he needs more ammo, or he needs another barrel," said John Petee, Phillips' brother. "At the end, you could hear a guy saying 'Incoming! RPG!' And then it cut off."

As soon as the voice mail stopped playing, the Petees began trying to reach their son in Afghanistan. The family figured out Petee had tried to call home earlier that day, but he didn't leave a message and the phone later redialed during battle.

They eventually reached their son.

"I finally got a hold of him," Sandie Petee said. "He was embarrassed, he said, 'Don't let Grandma hear it.'"

Stephen Phillips is scheduled to return home next month, when his tour is complete, his mother said.

Holy Crap this guy is awesome....

I was going to do a big gigantic rant on global warming. Had it all thought out and everything.

Then this guy did it for me. I'll let him speak:

Global Warming

Words from an Army Wife

First saw this on Arfcom. Thanks to DW_Drang, who saw it on Blackfive

Anyways...wanted to make sure credit was given first...so, This Op Ed originated at the Eugene, OR Register-Guard

We’ve marked the end of the fifth year of war in Iraq, and the 4,000th soldier killed there. They hold a peace rally downtown. There are dozens of people there. I’m sure many of them are the same people I see on the street corners — their signs say “Support the troops, not the war.” I watch them with tears in my eyes.

I believe in my heart that the demonstrators are good people. They want what I want: for the war to be over, and for all the soldiers fighting it to come home. They are hopeful, passionate, and they have no idea how much it hurts me to watch.

For some people, the war is a cause. It’s a chant, a picket sign, a march through town. For some it’s a political stance.

But I am the wife of a deployed soldier.

For me, the war is the reason I sleep alone every night. The reason that on most nights I’m not sleeping. It’s the strain in friendships that used to include both me and my husband, Paul. It’s the dinner invitations from other couples that no longer come. It’s learning to ride the tractor and unfreeze the well and remembering to start both cars on a regular basis so the batteries won’t die. It’s doing my chores, and his, and trying not to be lonely at night when the house is too quiet and there’s no one to talk to.

For me, the war is knowing that — best case scenario — these changes will define my life for the next year, and worst case, the changes will be permanent.

I want this war to be over more than anything I’ve ever wanted in my life, but that’s not why I cry. I cry because I am so relieved that Paul isn’t home to see this.

My husband fights this war. He risks his life every day. We have both made sacrifices for it. And to hear them say that it’s “a waste of time,” that it “will never make a difference,” that “we should call the whole thing off” — well, if that’s true, I’m not sure I’ll get out of bed tomorrow morning. There has to be a reason that our family — and thousands of others — are enduring this.

Paul believes that he is making a difference in this world. I have to believe that, too. As an Oregon National Guard wife, there is an unspoken code that assumes you won’t participate in anti-war sentiment, but that’s not what stops me from joining them. As I watch, I feel anger, not kinship.

The fact is, I didn’t really understand war until I married someone who fought it.

When I met Paul, he was already a combat veteran. He had served peacekeeping tours in Egypt and Israel, and tours that were anything but peaceful in Iraq. When he flirted with me, I told him I didn’t date military guys. When I caught him reading “The Art of War,” I thought he was a barbarian. When I met his Army friends, I was disgusted by the glorified battle stories they told. When he quit his civilian job and started wearing a uniform every day, I was proud when people thanked him for his service.When he left for Afghanistan, I quit my job to start a military support business. Sometimes you don’t know how you’ll react to something until you live it.

Lately, I read blogs by soldiers on the front lines. It’s the fastest way I know to be depressed and inspired all in one sitting. One of them writes:

“It’s easy to say we shouldn’t be at war, when you’re not the ‘we.’e_SEnS”

I didn’t become the “we” until Sept. 17, 2006, the day I married Paul, three years into the war in Iraq. And even then, I am only the “we” in the sense that I am joined legally and spiritually with a man who is. I’m the “we” beside the “we.”

The protesters say they support the troops, but not the war. To me, that’s impossible. I spent 10 years as a newscaster. If someone told me they supported newscasters but hated the news and thought it should be taken off the air, how supported would I feel? How can you say to someone, “I support your right to do your job — I even benefit when you do it well — but I think what you do is horrible and wrong and I’m resentful that it’s being done at all”?

How can we support the troops when we’re constantly telling them that what they do every day is wrong and they should be ashamed of doing it? How can we expect them to do their jobs well if by doing their jobs they are carrying out a war that we have labeled immoral? And if they don’t do their jobs well, don’t we all suffer?

Maybe what people really want is for the war to end — but for the protection our troops provide to continue. Without it, they may not have the right to speak out about the war, or the missions that comprise it, or the troops that carry out those missions.

Last summer we were in Ashland for a military ball. All of the soldiers and their dates were staying at the same hotel. When it was time for the party, we emerged from that hotel to a dozen female protesters, dressed in black and lining both sides of the sidewalk. They held hand-made signs about the body count in Iraq. We either had to cross the street, or walk right through them.

Paul and I were holding hands and looking forward to the evening. He was wearing his navy blue dress uniform and I had on a new white dress, strapless with a knee-length ruffled skirt. The air was comfortably warm and the sun had just started to set — the kind of summer evening in Oregon that makes you forget all the rain.

We walked through the protesters. They were silent. So were we. I shook my head in confusion. Why do people assume that if you wear a uniform, you’re in favor of the war? And how could they possibly think that 300 Oregon National Guard soldiers in town for a party had anything to do with planning the war they were protesting? These guys are just cogs in the wheel, following orders and hoping to come home alive.

“You’ll join us when your husband dies,” one of the protesters whispered.

I wheeled around, but felt Paul’s hand tighten sharply around mine before I could open my mouth. We kept walking. That night, we didn’t yet know about the deployment. What I did know was that my husband was a good man, and that neither of us wanted this war.

Paul joined the Army when he was a teenager — seven years before Sept. 11, 2001. He joined before we knew what the world would look like today. He joined because he feels that it is his duty to serve his country.

And thank God. Because what I now understand is this: The future of our country — our honor, our dignity, our freedom — rests on the shoulders of volunteers. Volunteers! And if my husband didn’t go to defend us, who would?

He didn’t have to go. His brother and father didn’t. My brother didn’t. (My father did, during Vietnam, but I never thought once about his service or sacrifice until I married Paul.)All of us could choose to stay home with our families and wait until the terrorists come to find us individually. I’m pretty sure that in Monroe, Ore., population 680, chances are good they never would.

But instead, Paul and thousands of men and women like him left their families, put their lives on hold, and went to meet the terrorists head on. And shouldn’t our reaction to that be solemn, tearful, overwhelming gratitude?

Forget “support.” We owe them our thanks.

There was a time I might have attended a peace rally. But that was before I became an Army wife. Before I understood the things that only become clear when your husband — or son, or brother, or father, or sister, or daughter, or wife, or mother — is the one fighting the war. When you are part of the “we.” When you have lent your loved one to Uncle Sam to fight for all of those who have their loved ones safe at home and out of harm’s way.

And here’s the dirtiest secret of all. I believe there should be mandatory military service for all of us. Maybe if every American served this country, we would all be in it together. We would all ride the wave of hope, fear, pride, panic, uncertainty and unconditional love that comes with being a military family in the middle of a deployment. We could all support each other.

And no one could condemn what my husband does for a living, because their husbands would be serving beside him. Freedom would cost each one of us exactly the same amount — instead of being a gift bestowed by a very few that pay a tremendous price. A gift that so many of us forget to say “thank you” for.

My husband has lost dozens of acquaintances and two very good friends to this war. One died in combat. The other returned safely from his tour of duty, but couldn’t forget the things he had seen. He killed himself a short time later. Paul thinks of the first every time he faces dangers on the battlefield. And he thinks of the second every time he does what he has to do to stay safe. The guilt from both is always with him.

I want my husband to come home. I want the war to be over, and for no other families to have to go through a deployment. But more than that, I want the 4,000 deaths that we have suffered in this war to mean something.

The truth is, I don’t care about life in Iraq or Afghanistan or what happens there. But I care very much that every American soldier who gave his or her life didn’t do it for nothing. I don’t want our country to make any more sacrifices for this war — but I want the sacrifices we have already made to matter. Unfortunately, I can’t see any way to have both.

This line made my blood boil
“You’ll join us when your husband dies,”